"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Dave wrote:

Some one I know, super glued something to his car dash board. He had
tried double sided sticky pads, but from what he tells me, I suspect a
coat of wax polish or similar made the bond fail.

He then asked me what to use to get rid of the glue. I advised him that
I would put this question to this group, but before I got back to my
keyboard, some one else has advised him to use nail varnish remover.

Because of the acetone, you can imagine the mess. So now to my
question...

What can he do to the dash to limit the damage and colour change?
Also, what should he have used in the first place? If anything.

By the way, the car is made by one of the top 2 French companies and the
dash is a dark grey in colour, though I didn't take much notice of the
make at the time.

Dave

Ther are only two chemicals known to remiove CA and they are acetone and
nirtomethane.

Both are aggressive solvents.

The dash is buggered.

There are a few others that would probably work, but you don't want to use
them, let alone be in the same room as an open bottle of the stuff. Things
I've used during my degree to dissolve similar polymers I made, read - to
clean glassware after experimental failures

Dimethylformamide - extremely nasty and very carcinogenic. I'm sure my tutor
was paraphrasing when he told me it would probably dissolve anything, but
because it was so nasty, it was preferable to look for another option than
to try this route. Unfortunately I did have to use this a few times.

Methylene chloride - another nasty one, unfortunately I had to use several
gallons of this to dissolve my project, accidentally whiffed once and gave
me a headache that lasted all day. Says carcinogenic to rats on the safety
data sheets Suspect not as effective as others though, as there was a lot
of stuff I couldn't dissolve in it, as above.

Methylpyrrolidinone - avoid anything with "pyrrol" in the word - it will
probably smell very very bad. Definitely avoid anything with "pyrrolidinone"
in - it smells worse. Luckily I only had to use this once.

Methyl ethyl ketone - very very whiffy, another not to be used. Didn't use
much.

Nitromethane - fairly easy to explode this, add ethylene diamine to give a
common explosive called PLX. This is a liquid explosive from which you'll
get a fairly spectacular bang. Would think the components would be hard to
get hold of for this reason.

Acetone - probably the least hazardous of the lot, but still whiffy. Was a
handy cleaner around the lab when I couldn't use water, used loads of it. I
think it has a rather pleasing aroma, but some people say it's nasty. Good
for removing superglue from fingers and most hard surfaces though. You can
find it in nail varnish remover, but remember, that a lot of nail varnish
removers today are based on isopropyl alcohol, which is no good.

Marcus